Posts by Chris 267

Fake.

It's clearly a laptop screen. You can see that when the finger presses the Notes icon, there's some distortion consistent with pressing a finger against a plastic laptop screen. If anyone thinks that an iTablet *isn't* going to come with an iPhone-like glass capacitive screen then they're off their rocker.

The other dead giveaway is the appearance of an iPhone keyboard in the (iPhone) app itself. It would be impossible to use in that position on a device that large. The likelihood of first-party Apple iPhone apps being ported directly to the device without tailoring for the larger screen is also low.

That the pictured device is in line with expectations, and that it takes its styling cues directly from the iPod Touch, is also a pretty good giveaway. It reminds me of the old 'iPod Touch' photos that had been created using an iPod 5G as the template (http://is.gd/2kZwr). It had iPod styling and no usability enhancements (retaining a soft-clickwheel).

I'm torn on this one...

While I have some sympathy with the Home Office's opinion that the story is 'rubbish' - this is the Daily Mail we're talking about - it still comes across as unbelievably arrogant.

There is no evidence because they have not made any effort to look for any evidence, which you'd think would be the first thing they would do on hearing of such a serious allegation about such an important government project.

Clunky interface not a surprise

My parents bought my grandparents a Toshiba combo PVR/DVD recorder, and I was tasked with setting it up and teaching my grandparents how to use it. I have never in my life encountered such a torturous interface. It was a clear case of design-by-committee. All the functionality was there, but using it was hideously unintuitive, and some functions were either given meaningless names themselves or were buried in menus with meaningless names.

After having used Sky+ this was a shock to the system, and to be quite honest I've sworn off Japanese PVR/disc recorders. I will have to read reviews with words such as "wonderful interface" and "a joy to use" before I touch one again, and I somehow I can't seem to find them in this review.

Right now I'm using a Tiscali TV+ box, which isn't quite Sky+ but is very very close.

iPhone call/data handovers

According to my mum, who is hard of hearing, the iPhone is the best phone she's ever used in terms of call audio quality.

The niggles I've seen with the iPhone have happened when I'm out of service, and a call comes in where the caller hangs up as soon as it goes to voicemail. This doesn't register as a missed call when I come back into coverage. I know this because I was testing a VoIP system for work, and was repeatedly making such calls.

In terms of handovers, the iPhone may work well for call handovers between cells but data handover between cell and WiFi is abysmal. It happens a lot when I pick up the phone, take it out of standby, and start an app immediately - it starts to use cellular data but when the WiFi starts up (a small delay after waking the phone), the download is transferred away from the cell network but never starts on WiFi. It's a minor niggle, as I can usually either restart the app or wait for the WiFi icon to come up before starting it in the first place, but it sure is annoying.